"The filibuster should be relegated to extreme circumstances, and I don't think Elena Kagan represents that," Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CBSs "Face the Nation."

Kyl voted to confirm Kagan to be solicitor general, the top lawyer who argues the administration's cases before the Supreme Court. But Kagan shouldn't be count on his vote again, he said.

"No," he said. "I explained at the time that my vote for the temporary position as the government's top lawyer in the Justice Department did not suggest how I would vote were she to be nominated for a lifetime appointment to a court such as the Supreme Court."

Administration efforts to keep Kagan's confirmation process humming along with little drama continue. Over the weekend, the White House sent a letter to the National Archives, urging the release of 160,000 pages of documents from Kagan's tenure in the Clinton White House. And this week she will head back to Capitol Hill for meetings to shore up additional support.

Judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) predicted Kagan's confirmation to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens will be "done this summer ahead of the court's new term. Leahy said he'll be sitting down with ranking Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) this week.

"We'll work out a time," he said on ABC's "This Week."

Republicans have meanwhile stepped up their criticism in the run-up to the expected summer hearing, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried a new line of attack Sunday, addressing Kagan's role in the Citizens United Case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment could not limit corporate funding in campaigns.

"Solicitor Kagan's office, in the initial hearing, argued that it'd be okay to ban books," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And then when there was a re-hearing, Solicitor Kagan herself, in her first Supreme Court argument, suggested that it might be okay to ban pamphlets. I think that's very troubling."

On the Sunday shows, GOP senators again focused on Kagan's role in barring military recruiters from Harvard Law School. In 2003, Kagan, the law schools dean, decided that military officials could not use the campus' main recruitment office because the military's "don't ask, don't tell" stance violated the schools anti-discrimination policy.

Sessions proclaimed that it was "no little bitty matter," and said that Kagan broke the law.

She disallowed them from the normal recruitment process on campus, he told Jake Tapper on This Week. She went out of her way to do so. She was a national leader in that, and she violated the law of the United States at various points in the process.

McConnell, who did not repeat the claim that Kagan had broken the law, did say "the committee ought to look into it," since the "record has yet to be developed."

And while Kyl declined to weigh in on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's claim that Kagan is "anti-military," he said the controversy will "play a part in the hearings."

"In my view, it was inappropriate for her to describe it as a discriminatory policy of the military," he said. "She did not deny entry on to the campus of the president, President Clinton, or the members of the Congress who had adopted the law."

The White House has stressed that Kagan has had great relationships with veterans and with the military. And Leahy pushed back on This Week, saying it was "sound and fury signifying nothing."

"If somebody wants to go in the military, they usually find a recruiter," he said. "I mean, I don't think there was a recruiting station on the campus when my youngest son went and joined the Marine Corps. He wanted to join the Marine Corps. He had no trouble finding a recruiter. And I think in this case, the recruitment went on at Harvard all the way through. This really is trying to make up something out of whole cloth."

The filibuster should be relegated to extreme circumstances, and I don't think Elena Kagan represents that

A homosexual socialist anti American supreme court justice appointed by a foreign born socialist muslim falsely occupying the office of president and you don't think it represents an extreme circumstance? You're an idiot.

As if I wasn't disgusted enough with the unprincipled invertebrates that pass for Republican Senators already. Kagan is the most virulently Leftwing pick for the Supreme Court in history, by far. If that isn't "extreme circumstances" I don't know what would be. These people are destroying our country.

As far as I'm concerned, the decision not to filibuster this woman is equal to a vote to gut the First and Second Amendments and the rest of the Bill of Rights, kill babies, open the borders, grant amnesty to the whole damned world, destroy the institution of marriage and the natural family, and to demoralize and destroy the United States military.

The governor and legislators of Arizona ought to be the ones in Congress. Kyl is failing the people of Arizona and the people of American. If he doesn’t recognize what a radical extreme Leftist Kagan is and the necessity of filibustering her nomination and fighting to reject her, he is out to lunch.

There is a civil war. Its currently "civil", but it is a war nonetheless. Its conservatives versus the statists. If a battle is given up, it yields time (a precious commodity to them) for them to mount another battle. There is crap-n-tax, immigration not-reform, and others, that must be opposed. Here is a golden opportunity to limit the statists time with these other efforts: prolong and fight Kagen, win or lose... for more battles are to be waged.

25
posted on 05/16/2010 2:59:13 PM PDT
by C210N
(0bama, Making the world safe for Marxism)

Kyl is only marginally better than McCain. He voted for a HIGHLY controversial Obama appointment last year, and his office turned a completely deaf ear to my complaint. I look forward to working for his removal.

It's time to give useful idiot Jon Kyl , the Robert Bennett treatment and retire him for good. Hey, Kyl, we will not forget when you run for reelection. Who on earth goes into a chess game, and telegraphs his intention to lose to his opponent, before the game even begins?

“A homosexual socialist anti American supreme court justice appointed by a foreign born socialist muslim falsely occupying the office of president and you don’t think it represents an extreme circumstance? You’re an idiot.”

In foreign policy, Democrats believe in unilateral disarmament. The rinos like Kyl believe in political disarmament.
Why can’t this dummy keep his cards close to vest and say that he reserves the right to retain all options as the situation unfolds?

I believe someone has cautioned the pubs to choose their battles wisely. FOOLS. There ARE no small battles against this bunch of thugs. They need to fight every skirmish like it’s their last. Or it will be.

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